While Canada’s continued emphasis on women and girls should be commended, our past experience shows that international aid organizations and mechanisms require far greater scrutiny than this new aid policy admits.

Therefore, while the new Canadian aid policy builds upon past involvement in development projects concerning women and girls, it fails to address past examples of Canadian funding to multilateral mechanisms and international organisations being used improperly.

It is imperative that the Trudeau government not get lost in the idealism of humanitarian aid, and be vigilant about the threat of aid diversion when distributing our taxpayer dollars to various international groups.